Many education groups — including those representing charter schools, school boards and administrators — support the Common Core State Standards. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Education Writer

About Tuesday’s meeting

The hearing of the subcommittee on the Common Core State Standards is at 9 a.m. in Room 521 of the House Office Building in Lansing. More online: ■ For information about the standards, or to download the standards in math and English language arts, go to www.corestandards.org. ■ For information about Michigan’s adoption of the standards, go to www.michigan.gov/mde and search for “common core.” ■ To read what critics of the common core have to say, go to www.stopcommoncoreinmichigan.com.

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Michigan’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards, a set of learning goals embraced by 44 other states in the nation, should have been a slam dunk given the widespread support that exists in the state.

But the standards, which for the first time provide common expectations of what students should learn from one state to the next in math and English language arts, are coming under increasing attack in Michigan and elsewhere in the country.

Advocates argue that the standards are rigorous, will prepare students for life after high school and will help them compete internationally.

But critics — mostly conservative Republicans — question the rigor of the standards: They say the standards represent an unprecedented federal intrusion into education, leave states little opportunity to make changes and destroy local control.

And some union officials say that while they support the standards, they are cautious about moving too quickly to attach high-stakes decisions to them.

The debate brews again Tuesday, when the first of several legislative hearings will be held by a subcommittee tasked with making a recommendation to the Michigan Legislature on whether to halt the common core here or continue to move forward.

That group was formed after state Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester Hills, successfully added language to a budget bill barring the Michigan Department of Education from spending money to implement either the common core standards or the Smarter Balanced Assessment, one of two national exams that are being developed based on the standards. State education officials have been planning to replace state exams in English language arts and math with the Smarter Balanced tests beginning in the 2014-15 school year.

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Republican lawmakers called the move a pause in implementation. But it came nearly three years after the bipartisan state Board of Education adopted the standards, and as school districts across the state have spent considerable time and money training teachers and upgrading technology to prepare for the online exam, and making sure their curriculum lines up with the new expectations.

Pulling back from the standards would be a tragedy, common core supporters say. Just 18% of Michigan’s high school juniors are deemed college-ready, based on ACT’s tough criteria. And Michigan continues to slide behind other states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national exam given to a representative sample of students in each state.

“We don’t want to sentence any young person to poor preparation for life and work,” said John Austin, president of the state Board of Education, which adopted the standards in 2010. “If we walk away ... that’s what we would be doing.”

But to McMillin, Michigan’s exit would be the right thing to do.

“I’m very confident that if we have honest debates over these next couple of months and we hear from the grass roots and the people that are affected, the Legislature will decide ... to stop the funding permanently,” McMillin said.

Support is widespread

The common core standards were developed through an initiative of the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of the Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). In addition to 45 states, four U.S. territories and the District of Columbia have adopted all of the standards. Minnesota has adopted the English language arts standards.

In Michigan, they’re backed by a diverse set of groups and individuals — many with vastly different ideologies.

Gov. Rick Snyder supports them. So does state Superintendent Mike Flanagan, the Michigan Education Association, the Business Leaders of Michigan, the Great Lakes Education Project, the Detroit Regional Chamber, the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan PTA, the Education Trust-Midwest, Democrats for Education Reform, and Students First.

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Many other education groups — including those representing charter schools, school boards and administrators — also support the standards.

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler, now head of the Business Roundtable, an association of the chief executive officers of leading U.S. companies, said in a letter to the Republican National Committee in May that the standards are “fundamental to driving the change the U.S. education system desperately needs.”

And during the Mackinac Policy Conference in May, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee, CEO of StudentsFirst, an organization that pushes for education reforms such as overhauling teacher tenure, both urged lawmakers to support the standards.

“Common core state standards are clear and straightforward. Do not pull back from these high, lofty standards,” Bush said.

“The common core state standards are a great thing for Michigan as well as the other states,” said Marchelle Freeman of Detroit, whose three children attend schools in the Detroit and Gibraltar school districts. “It ensures that all students, regardless of where they are, will be on an even playing field.”

Federal involvement questioned

The widespread support has made the growing controversy over the standards puzzling to some advocates. A group called Stop Common Core in Michigan has formed to push for the elimination of the standards. A Republican member of the State Board of Education, up for re-election last year, was tossed from the ballot because of her support of the Common Core.

The debate isn’t just raging in Michigan. Similar push-backs have happened this year in Indiana, South Carolina, Kansas, Wisconsin and Tennessee. To date, though, no state that adopted the standards has completely pulled out, though Indiana lawmakers also paused implementation for further study.

“We don’t like the fact that the state board of education signed a contract giving away their right to govern,” said Troy resident Deborah DeBacker, the codirector of the anti-common core group in Michigan. She said she’s also concerned about privacy, because she believes the national exams that will assess the standards will provide too much data to the federal government.

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“We should retain our authority, and be able to debate these issues in Lansing,” McMillin said.

Michigan lawmakers this spring heard from one of the leading critics of the standards, Sandra Stotsky, a professor at the University of Arkansas who also was in charge of rewriting standards in Massachusetts. She sat on a validation committee for the common core standards and refused to sign off on them, saying they are mediocre.

“They are not going to make us competitive,” she told lawmakers. “If they’re not first class, I’m not interested in them and I don’t want them in any state.”

A key issue to critics is the federal government’s role. Though they weren’t involved in the development of the standards, the U.S. Department of Education has helped fund the creation of the exams that will be based on the standards. And the Obama administration has provided incentives for states to adopt college and career readiness standards, though it has never specifically cited the common core standards.

“The common core actually came from the governors,” Snyder said during a May event. “It was the governors of the states getting together ... to say we want to partner at the national level and all levels to say, Let’s raise the bar, let’s partner together so we can have a better system of education.”

But those arguments don’t appease critics. They say the standards are nothing more than a national curriculum, leaving local parents and teachers with little control over what their kids are taught.

“Whatever is on the test is taught,” McMillin said.

Shaton Berry of Warren, immediate past-president of the Michigan PTA who now works to promote the common core, said that’s a common misconception.

“The standards are what the students should learn. Curriculum is how they’re learning it. The standards do not dictate what curriculum a school district uses.”

Standards are important

Doug Rothwell, president and CEO of the Business Leaders for Michigan, said that for too long, standards have been too weak or there’s been too much variation in learning from one district to the next. The common core, he said, addresses that.

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It also addresses concerns about the future. Rothwell said within the next decade we’ll need 60% of the work force to have an education beyond high school. Currently, he said, just 30% of the work force has that level of education.

“We are very seriously concerned about our ability to produce the talent we need for the jobs that are being created,” Rothwell said.

McMillin said Michigan should develop its own college and career readiness standards, but he said he has overall concerns about the amount of testing students are being subjected to. He said the focus on the core subject areas is pushing away the arts.

The American Federation of Teachers-Michigan, like its national parent organization, is more cautious about common core.

Nate Walker, a policy analyst for the AFT-Michigan, said the organization supports the standards, saying the idea of having learning standards and goals are important because they help guide instruction.

But they’re concerned about the implementation and want to ensure that high-stakes decisions based on the assessments — such as tying teacher evaluations to student growth on exams — aren’t made until the standards have been fully implemented and teachers have had the proper training and resources.

“Our position is we don’t want those decisions to be made immediately,” Walker said.